[sparkaction]

BBRY has changed their definition of subscriber to

" Rather than calculating the total of all subscriber accounts that have an active status at the end of a reporting period and for which infrastructure access fees are thereby generated, RIM will identify its BlackBerry subscriber base as the total of all BlackBerry subscriber accounts that are provisioned to access BlackBerry services, regardless of whether RIM is receiving infrastructure access fees from each such subscriber in any given month. The Company believes this change will better reflect the base of BlackBerry users that may contribute to service revenues in the future, whether solely through infrastructure access fees or the integrated service and software offering being developed.

When I read the above definition of a BBRY subscriber, I am thinking anyone that could potentially contribute non-hardware revenues to BBRY. Given the movement towards BYOD I am thinking that an Android or IOS user on BES would be considered a subscriber under the old and new definition but the new definition would capture any consumer using an Android or IOS device that is HYPOTHETICALLY given access to BlackBerry World or to BBM on a cross-platform model (ie: free BBM but must pay up to use BBM Voice/Video). What do you think?


My second point of discussion is that the 3 million decline in subscribers during Q4 of 2013 appears to be coming from " On the enterprise, where is the 3 million subscribers coming from, our data show that it’s actually mostly coming out of what we call the pre-paid segment." as per Thor, refer to transcript on seekingalpha.

Blackberry CEO Discusses Q4 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript - Seeking Alpha

What do you think he is referring to when in the same sentence he uses the words enterprise and pre-paid segement? BBRY appears to have a different definition of pre-paid than the traditional "not post paid" definition in North America.

[peter9477]

I'm largely guessing, but I've had the feeling the "provisioned to access BlackBerry services" basically means all BBIDs which are active on their network. If there are older devices without BBIDs, or other corner cases, they'd be counting them too still, but going forward it seems this would cover everything required to count "subscribers" (though I bet they ditch that term this year or next).

I don't think the "hypothetically able to access" stuff would be counted. I think they'd have to have BBIDs and be logging into that.

[mikeycollins13]

BBRY has changed their definition of subscriber to

My second point of discussion is that the 3 million decline in subscribers during Q4 of 2013 appears to be coming from " On the enterprise, where is the 3 million subscribers coming from, our data show that it’s actually mostly coming out of what we call the pre-paid segment." as per Thor, refer to transcript on seekingalpha.

Blackberry CEO Discusses Q4 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript - Seeking Alpha

What do you think he is referring to when in the same sentence he uses the words enterprise and pre-paid segement? BBRY appears to have a different definition of pre-paid than the traditional "not post paid" definition in North America.

Pre pay= People who buy air time credit/ points etc and "charge up the phone", often called pay-go here in Europe. Less good credit for phone line etc.